


blue eyes

by kurgaya



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Could Be Canon, Could Be Canon-Divergence, Don't copy to another site, Episode Tag, Family Feels, Gen, You Decide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28170324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: [Episode Tag for 2x6: The Tragedy]If something can go wrong, it will. Gideon. Bo-Katan. Those damned ice spiders. The krayt dragon.The Asset, Din thinks, turning back to Grogu again.You’re like a father to him, Ahsoka had said.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Comments: 13
Kudos: 81





	blue eyes

**Author's Note:**

> The canon divergence is implied(?). I might run with it one day.

Din doesn't expect much from the Jedi seeing stone. _Atop a ruin_ , Ahsoka had described it, but Din's not sure the slabs of stone on the mountaintop can be considered a _ruin_. They resemble a monument more than anything, six vaguely triangular stones arranged like teeth in a colossal mouth. That would make the seeing stone the tongue, and Din places Grogu on top of it, fearing they're about to be swallowed by something far larger than he knows.

"Well?" he says, stepping back to give Grogu's impending epiphany some space. "Do you feel anything?"

Grogu cocks his head. His ridiculous ears twitch. Cool air races through the ruin and over the mountain, but it feels like normal, breathable, planetary wind, and not some sorcerous Force-air. Grogu's robe flutters. Din sighs.

They're going to be up here for a while.

Din flicks on his visor. Heat signatures ignite in front of his eyes. Tython’s butterflies are bright and wobbling through the air, but it's the fading signatures on the ground that draw his attention. There are animal prints everywhere, criss-crossing and chasing and climbing. His targets are usually the sentient sort, not animals, and few of the tracks are familiar to him. Some are definitely tooka, and Din follows their scurrying around the seeing stone, searching for more.

Grogu babbles. He's a painful orange in the visor, the brightest heat signature of all. Din wonders if this is what it's like to see with the Force - or whatever it is the Jedi are expecting Grogu to do. Din's own hand is a cooler shade beneath his beskar, and he watches the colours blur together as he straightens Grogu's robe.

"I don't see much here, kid. You got any ideas?"

Grogu coos at the butterflies. Din resigns himself to figuring this out alone.

Ahsoka hadn't provided much instruction. She hadn’t provided much of anything, really. It's true that Din probably wouldn't have found this ruin by himself, but the coordinates were all their stop at Corvus was good for. The beskar staff is nice but he was fine without it. Grogu's name is handy but he could have learned it himself - somehow. The kid responds to pretty much anything, anyway. He even responded to Ahsoka's _mind-talking_ and Din kicks a rock, regretting that they stopped at Corvus at all.

Finding the Jedi had seemed so impossible before they actually _found one_. By Creed, Din knows he has to find the Jedi or raise the kid trying, and he'd wanted to yell at the Armourer for setting him on such a ludicrous path. He would have rather chased purrgil through deepspace. Grogu's _fifty_. Din could raise the kid for the rest of his life and Grogu would _still_ be a child. He hadn't wanted to dedicate his life to that. He’s a Mandalorian, a bounty hunter, and he works best alone. Din had no place for a child in his life. But the chance of finding a Jedi was laughable compared to outliving the kid - and yet here they are, Jedi-guided to a Jedi stone. They're one step away from finding _more_ Jedi. Din's one step away from fulfilling his task.

He almost had - back on Corvus. He had found a Jedi: a teacher. He had felt the bindings of his impossible task unravelling around him. For a moment, neither Grogu nor the Jedi were his responsibility, and in that moment, he had felt himself unweighted by Grogu’s sling, by his little body, and his magic-waving arms.

And Din’s arms had felt empty.

He wanders further from the seeing stone, checking for signs of habitation. He glances back at Grogu every few steps, one hand lowering to his holster as he increases their distance. It’s unlikely anything will sneak up on him when he can see for miles from the mountaintop, but Din’s learned to expect nothing and everything this year.

If something can go wrong, it will. Gideon. Bo-Katan. Those damned ice spiders. The krayt dragon.

 _The Asset_ , Din thinks, turning back to Grogu again.

It still terrifies him - that emptiness. That moment on Corvus, in the back of the _Crest_. The _Crest_ is all that remains of his home. The Tribe are scattered and murdered, and the Covert abandoned. He hadn’t realised he had anything left to lose.

 _You’re like a father to him_ , Ahsoka had said.

If even she could see it - devoid of attachments as Jedi apparently are - then Din’s luck is even worse than he’d thought.

 _This is The Way_ , he thinks, kicking another pebble and kicking himself, too.

Grogu watches the pebble roll towards him. Then he lifts his little hand and waves, cooing unintelligibly.

Nothing Jedi-y going on yet, then.

Some hours pass. Din searches the ruin until Tython’s star is directly overhead. The shadows of the temple shorten, sending little creatures hurrying into their dens. Grogu chases a rodent in between a crack in the stone, but only one of them is squealing in glee.

“This isn’t the time for games,” Din says, watching Grogu poke his head into the darkness. He pities the poor Jedi who will end up with him. At this rate, it’ll never happen. Din’s luck has been piss-poor since he accepted the fob on the kid. In the grand scheme of things, that fateful hunt on Arvala-7 wasn’t that long ago. He’s by no means a young man anymore. Recently, he feels like he’s had his fair share of bad luck for multiple lifetimes, and then he wonders if the space-voodoo manipulating the universe thinks he’s as long-lived as Grogu’s species, or something.

He can’t help but dwell on Grogu’s age. Fifty. That’s getting on a bit, for a human lifespan. Grogu’s practically an old man and he has his head stuck in the temple ruin.

Din sighs again. He abandons his surveillance just as Grogu’s squealing intensifies into shrieks.

“Hey!”

He yanks Grogu free and earns a tooka to the face. It pounces from beneath the stone, ears larger than Grogu’s and flattened to its skull. Its eyes are tiny and gleaming, and Din’s armour flashes as he blocks the tooka with his forearm. He throws it off. They both yell, man and cat, and the tooka’s expression is terrified. Din hasn’t had an expression since he swore the Creed, but he draws his blaster and fires a warning shot, and that’s almost the same thing.

The tooka flees. The last Din sees of it is its orange-blue tail disappearing into the undergrowth. He re-holsters his gun.

Grogu peers up at him with a smile. Din tucks his chin down in what he hopes is disappointment. Grogu babbles happily, even with a swipe across his nose.

“It got you good, huh? Let me see.”

The wound is superficial. Din dabs it with his cloak just in case.

“You need to stop picking fights with tooka,” he says. “They’re not frogs. They’ll eat you.”

He doesn’t know if that’s true. Grogu’s probably too big of a mouthful, even for a hungry tooka. The one on Sorgan gave it a good go, and Din’s not willing to take that chance. He sets Grogu back onto the seeing stone, far from tooka eyes and further from the possibility of anything interesting happening at all.

At least they’re safe up here. Din hadn’t seen any settlements through his scope. The _Razor Crest_ is alone at the bottom of the hill. If they’re hanging around here for much longer, he might have to jet down and find Grogu some lunch. Tooka probably isn’t on the menu, but it’s hard to say with Grogu’s appetite.

 _Lunch_ is something else Din never expected of this year. He rarely devotes time to a sit-down meal. He still doesn’t - at least for himself - but Grogu’s hunger demands a schedule. It’s harder to ignore than his own.

It will have to wait. They’re here for Jedi stuff, not a picnic.

“Ahsoka said you’d know what to do,” Din says. “I can’t - communicate with you, like she can. She said you have to choose. You have to call the Jedi."

Grogu blinks. His eyes drift in the direction the tooka fled.

“Not happening,” Din says.

Grogu whines.

“It’s a wild animal.”

Grogu’s ears perk up. His eyes are huge.

"Don’t look at me like that. I’m not tasked with finding you a pet. We barely have enough space on the _Crest_ as it is."

Grogu reaches out with both hands. Din tilts his head, pretending to consider. Even exasperated, he's not going to deny the kid. He crouches down and closes his fingers around Grogu’s tiny ones. It’s incredible to think these hands lifted a mudhorn from the ground. He should’ve known he’d be stuck with Grogu back then. The kid saved him from being skewered and still Din traded him off to the Imps.

"I'm not a good choice, you know. I need to get you to the Jedi. You know that. Ahsoka said it's dangerous for you if…"

Well, he's not completely sure what Ahsoka said. She spoke of the Force, and the Dark and the Light. Apparently the Force is everywhere and within everything. The Jedi can control it - or hear it, or something. Din wonders what it's telling Grogu. He wonders what it's trying to tell _him_.

There's a _meow_ from behind him. The tooka is back. It scratches behind its ear, beady eyes closed with satisfaction.

Grogu cries out with delight.

Din rolls his eyes. All the Jedi in the galaxy, and Grogu wants the cat. "I don't think that's one of your options, kid."

 _Meow_ , says the tooka. It approaches in a blur of blue-orange. It keeps a wide berth from Din, twitching like his hand towards his gun. It circles Grogu and the seeing stone, and its ears are a near-perfect mirror of the kid's. They could be communicating to each other with those ears. Din's seen stranger things.

"All right," he says, not that Grogu is listening. He knows when he's outclassed - by a tooka, of all things. But that might not be saying much. The things Grogu chooses to fixate on are unpredictable. "Guess I'll keep watch."

He draws his gun just in case the tooka gets any ideas. It's hard to say how sentient they are. There's something in this one's eyes that looks more sentient than most; a spark of something, a glimmer of blue. It might just be the sky reflecting off Din's armour.

It might be the glow of the runes on the stone.

They appear in quick succession. They might be letters or images, and there are dozens of them, etched into a ring around the stone. They shine with a light that is at once natural and unnatural, and then the whole stone seems to glow, and then the air around it, and Grogu, and the tooka, and their eyes. Din shields his face, having to squint even behind his helmet. The light is as bright as Ahsoka's lazer sword. Din's eyes water, and then he feels the light - or the wind, or the _Force_ \- slam against his chest. It pushes him right off the dial and into the bushes, and it reaches up, up, up all the way to the sky.

Something drops out of the clouds. It approaches fast, like the dread in Din's throat. It doesn't look like an Imperial ship, but that's not necessarily a good thing.

It doesn't look like Grogu will be staying much longer. Din's not sure that's a good thing.

He turns back to Grogu, alight on the stone. The tooka is gone. Looks like it's just Din protecting the kid again.

Unless the ship carries a Jedi. Could it be that easy?

Din doesn't know about that, either. He draws his other blaster, just in case.

"Stay there," he tells Grogu. "I'll be back for you."

Grogu doesn't respond, but Din hadn't expected him to. The Force glows around him, eerie and blue. Din wonders what he's seeing.

It certainly isn't Din, anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! All comments appreciated :)


End file.
